The Perfect Stranger (35 page)

But he was a smoker, like Mother. Polluting his lungs, polluting the air for the rest of the world, not caring if he got cancer or if anyone else did.

Selfish, reckless . . .

Just like Mother.

The doctor had assured Kay, years ago, when questioned, that her own cancer had originated in her breast and not her lung, meaning that it hadn’t come from second-hand smoke exposure. But Kay didn’t buy it.

It doesn’t matter now. Mother is long gone.

She won’t be waiting for Ray. Nor will Paul Collier, the man who impregnated his wife and then left. Never a father, certainly never “Daddy.”

But that doesn’t matter, either. Not anymore.

Kay purchased a round-trip ticket to Alabama so that no one would guess the truth later, but she never had any intention of using the return trip. She came knowing she was going to die in this place, surrounded by friends. Here, where she wouldn’t lie alone and rotting away, undiscovered, in a lonely house for days, weeks, maybe months.

But she couldn’t let them know she’d taken her own life, because then they might figure out that she’d taken Meredith’s.

No one must ever find out about that.

Her friends, and Meredith’s family—they’d never understand. They’d hate her, and she couldn’t bear that. When she’s gone, she wants to be remembered with love, wants her life to have meant something to someone. Until now, there was no chance of that.

No harm, she realized, in letting the others go on believing what they already do: that Meredith was killed in a random break-in, or that a notorious murderess had infiltrated their little circle. How fortuitous the Jenna Coeur connection had turned out to be, popping up to provide an easy answer to all her problems.

That’s why she planted the idea that she’d seen Jenna Coeur in Atlanta that morning; why she hadn’t tried very hard to track down Detective Burns afterward. She was going to let them think the notorious Coldhearted Killer had made it here and killed her. It was going to happen in the middle of the night.

Then the detective called back and told her Jenna Coeur had surfaced in L.A.

Her plan muddled, she wondered whether she should hold off.

But, no—it was time.

She owed it to Meredith—to her family. And it had to look like a murder. No one could ever suspect suicide. Not with her life insurance policy hanging in the balance, along with a hefty estate.

The Heywoods are the beneficiaries in her will.

Thanks to her shrewd lifestyle, some wise investments, and owning a modest house that’s drastically appreciated in value over the years, she is worth quite a bit of money . . . rather, she will be, when the house is sold and the estate is liquidated.

Worth more dead than alive, as Meredith put it. Just as Meredith was—except, as she explained to Kay, her own policy was so modest it wouldn’t go very far anyway.

But her money will.

The Heywoods’ financial troubles will soon be over.

Of course, they don’t know that yet. The windfall will be a pleasant surprise.

Meredith would have been pleased.

Yes, she has worked hard to lay the groundwork for this final, necessary step. Her affairs are in order. Meredith’s family will get their inheritance, along with a sealed letter she left with her lawyer. In it, she simply tells the family how much Meredith meant to her, and how, lacking a family of her own, she chose to help theirs. That was it. No other explanation, nothing that would ever arouse suspicion. She couldn’t bear that.

Earlier in the week she’d discontinued her other blog. Terrapin Terry was going on a yearlong sabbatical to the Galapagos Islands to study the turtles there.

Her laptop, too, is gone. She’d erased the hard drive, then thrown the whole thing into a Dumpster before driving to the airport this morning, covering her tracks.

The knife was packed in her suitcase—the real reason she had to disregard Elena’s advice and check it.

What if it hadn’t made the tight connection?

Then this wouldn’t have happened after all.

She’d have had to wait.

The last thing she ever touched was the tortoiseshell handle . . . for good luck.

Yes. She’d thought of everything.

It was time. She was ready to go, regardless of where Jenna Coeur was—or wasn’t.

Let them think that Jaycee had done it. Or that there had been another random break-in. Let them think anything other than the truth.

I just want them to love me.

I
need
them to love me.

And this way . . . they do.

They’ll never know.

“Kay . . .” Landry’s voice is fading. Landry is holding her hand, squeezing it. “I’m here with you, Kay. Come on. Hang on . . .”

No. She can’t. It’s time to let go.

She’s ready to find the light, and Meredith . . .

Meredith is somewhere, waiting.

We’ll get together someday,
Meredith promised her.
One way or another.
I just know it.

Kay whirls through time and space, flying backward through the years.

I know it’s difficult to hear news like this,
the doctor tells her,
but the important thing is that we caught it early. We’re going to discuss your treatment options, and there are many . . .

It’s not better to have loved and lost,
Mother rasps in her cigarette voice.
If you don’t love, you can’t lose
 
. . .

Kay is a little girl again, all alone, always alone, standing by the edge of a pond on a hot summer’s day, reaching for a rock . . .

Reaching . . .

Slowly . . .

Reaching . . .

Steadily . . .

Kay draws her last breath and spirals into the darkness.

Sitting on the couch with Jordan on her lap, reading him a story, Beck has managed to put the remaining questions surrounding her mother’s e-mail out of her mind for the time being. Losing herself in the silly rhyme and rhythm of Dr. Seuss is just what the doctor ordered—particularly on the heels of several failed attempts to get through Jordan’s first book choice—Robert Munsch’s
Love You Forever
—without breaking down sobbing.

Mom bought that book for him when he was born, her first grandchild. She used to read it for him sitting in this very spot, cradling him in her lap, even as an infant. He doesn’t remember that, of course, any more than he’ll eventually remember more recent times with her.

We should have taken pictures
, Beck thinks, turning a page and pausing the story so that Jordan can absorb the picture first, as he likes to do, tracing the colorful figures with a chubby index finger.

We shouldn’t have just posed for photos on big occasions like Christmas morning and birthdays.

Yes, they should have captured the little things, the everyday moments that feel like a dime a dozen when they’re happening but are priceless when they’re gone.

“Anybody home?” Teddy calls from the kitchen.

Beck breaks off reading long enough to call, “In here!”

Teddy comes in, looking instantly relieved to see them. He must have told Beck half a dozen times to be sure to lock the doors after he and dad left . . .

Even though whoever killed Mom came in through a window.

A random stranger?

The thought is no less chilling two weeks after the fact, and yet . . .

She wants to think that her mother died secure in the love of her family and friends; can’t bear to think that she drew her last breath thinking she’d been betrayed.

That e-mail exchange . . . the one her friend had mentioned . . . doesn’t seem to exist. Either she’d lied about it—why?—or it’s been deleted.

Why? And by whom? By Mom, before she died? By whoever stole her cell phone and laptop?

“Aunt Beck is reading to me, Daddy. Hop . . . Hop . . . Hop on Pop . . .”

“Why don’t you hop right up here on Pop, big guy.” Teddy holds out his arms and his son stands up on the couch and leaps into them.

Watching them hug, Beck smiles wistfully.

Maybe someday she’ll have a child of her own.

After this business with Keith is settled, and she’s had time to regroup, rebuild . . .

Maybe.

“How did everything go?” she asks Teddy, standing up and setting the Dr. Seuss book aside. “With Dad and the paperwork?”

He shrugs. “It could have been better. Louise did her best, but—”

“Louise?”

“From the insurance company.”

Beck stares.

“She doesn’t know what happened, Ted,” Dad says from the doorway. “I didn’t want her to worry. I didn’t want any of you to worry, but . . .” He shrugs. “Too late now.”

I didn’t want her to worry . . .

It’s almost exactly what he’d said about Mom the day Beck ran into him having lunch with Louise.

Louise . . . from the insurance company?

“I had to let Mom’s life insurance policy lapse. I couldn’t afford the premium. I was trying to figure out a payment plan, a way to keep it going—that’s why I met with Louise the day I ran into you in that restaurant. It threw me off, seeing you there, knowing you didn’t know that Mom was sick again . . .”

No wonder. No wonder he’d been so edgy. No wonder she’d thought he was hiding something. To think she assumed the worst about him . . .

“We were in the tail end of the policy’s grace period when she died. It ran out at midnight, but the coroner—” Her father breaks off, takes a deep breath. “The coroner pinpointed her death after twelve. Too late, according to Louise.”

“Oh, Dad.” Beck walks across the room and puts her arms around him. “It’s okay.”

“We’re out of money. I can’t pay the mortgage.”

She shrugs. “Sell the house.”

“I’m going to have to. But even then . . .”

“It’s okay, Dad.”

Money . . . a house . . . even people, and memories . . .

Things you have. Things you lose, no matter how hard you try to hold on.

“It’s not okay.” He shakes his head. “She wouldn’t have wanted this. I let her down.”

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t let her down. Dad, you loved her. She knew that. We all knew that.”

In the end, that’s the thing, the only thing, that matters. The only thing that lasts forever, if you’re lucky enough to find it. The love.

Jordan might not remember Mom, but her love is his legacy, and Beck knows it will live on forever, through him, through all of them.

Kay is gone.

Holding her hand, Landry felt her go; felt the muscles unclench, felt the life evaporate from her flesh.

Shaken, she stands and backs away, toward the doorway, then remembers . . .

Whoever did this is lurking somewhere out there.

She’s better off in here, locked in, until help gets here. The 911 operator assured her they’re on the way.

She presses the button in the doorknob and moves back across the room to the bed. Sinking onto the edge of the mattress, she thinks of Elena.

If she did it, then she’s not vulnerable.

But what if it was someone else? Jenna, or Jaycee, or Bruce . . .

Then I need to warn Elena.

Her gaze falls on a cell phone—Kay’s cell phone—sitting on the bedside table.

Kay used it to call Detective Burns, to let her know about Jenna Coeur in the airport, and now . . .

Now it’s too late.

The detective needs to know what’s going on, Landry realizes.

She hits Redial.

The phone rings . . . rings . . . rings . . . rings . . .

And goes into voice mail. “You’ve reached Detective Crystal Burns. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If this is an urgent matter, please call my cell phone at—”

Wait a minute.

This is supposed to
be
her cell phone.

Landry lowers the phone and looks at the screen to see which number she just dialed.

It’s not the one Detective Burns gave her on that card, the one she’d committed to memory. The one Kay swore she’d called.

Why would she lie?

Does it matter? She’s dead. It’s not as if she killed herself, much less Meredith, or Tony Kerwin . . .

There’s no evidence, even, that Tony was murdered.

She replays everything Bruce told her about that. He said it would be possible, that certain drugs mimic a heart attack and wouldn’t be detected in an autopsy if—

“Oh my God.”

Stunned, she remembers exactly what he was saying when she was on the phone with him earlier, right before she thought she heard someone on the stairs.

“There are very few places where those drugs would even be found. Succinylcholine alone—SUX—is used in anesthesiology and it’s used along with liquid potassium chloride for lethal injection executions.”

Those last three words were lost on her at the time.

Now . . .

She turns around to stare at Kay, lying on the floor, remembering . . .

Remembering how she’d posted about her brush with fame: having worked at the federal prison where the Oklahoma City Bomber was executed over a decade ago.

But why would she want Tony Kerwin dead?

Because Elena hated him?

Because . . .

Because of the stress he was causing?

Dangerous stress. Stress that could cause a recurrence.

And what about Meredith? Why would Kay ever want Meredith dead? She loved her; everyone loved her. She was truly shaken up at her funeral; you can’t fake that kind of emotion.

Landry can hear sirens in the distance.

They’re coming. Thank God, they’re coming.

She and Kay had talked about the dying process the night of Meredith’s funeral. About the so-called blessing that their friend hadn’t suffered a long, lingering death; hadn’t wasted away like Kay’s mother, or Whoa Nellie, or so many of the others . . .

Kay had agreed with Elena, that it was better to go quickly—to never know what hit you. She agreed that only dying was to be dreaded, not death itself . . .

The sirens are closer.

Landry walks over to the window and peers out, watching until the red domed lights appear, rotating on the top of the first police car.